Pencils: Ryan Kelly
Letters: Douglas E. Sherwood
My loving brothers have brought to my attention that maybe, just maybe, my reviews tend towards the overly-long. Not verbose, per se, but a bit too lengthy. As is my tendency I dismissed these observations with a head shake and a snarl, but after some thought and deliberation I decided that maybe the shit-eaters were not completely in the wrong...or maybe I just got sick of their constant bitching. Looking over my submissions and Sinister's suggestion that I need not review every aspect of a comic – though I am sure that any number topics of discussion are barely even touched upon in any review, much less my own – I approached this new entry with fresh eyes, and a clear purpose: to write a shorter review. Therefore, and without any further ado other, that is, than this entirely unnecessary and – dare I say it? – verbose clause, I give you my review of Local #8...a black-and-white comic.
I picked up this issue of Local mostly because of Wood's DMZ. Even before I got back into comics and began picking issues up quasi-weekly, I made sure I knew what was going on in the world of the occasionally funny papers. DMZ jumped out at me as a very interesting concept and I subsequently ensured that my bookstore carried it. Hearing about Local I thought I ought give it a shot, especially considering how much respect I have for DMZ. Funny that a comic called something like “Local” would, in its introduction to mine eyes, be about my hometown and place of eternal residence, Chicago. This should probably be noted as just the first of a wide array of emotions this comic ran me through.
Needless to say, I haven't read anything else in the series. Typically I hate jumping in blind like this, but it seemed like both an interesting experiment and not a bad way of coming to some sort of conclusion regarding a book's relative “worth.” Yeah, a potentially absurd approach to either get to know a book or judge its value, but hey, this is reviewing and absurdity is more or less assumed. Absurd or no, Local #8 pretty much convinced me that I need to get all of the back issues and add it to my nascent draw list.
While this issue takes place in Chicago, there isn't much of anything “Chicago” in it. Sure, she's waitressing in Wicker Park as the cover suggests and, yes, they do walk to the El tracks at one point, but that's about it. Any number of methods and landmarks exist to place a reader within a context that would be recognizably Chicago, yet none are used here. Oddly, I'm not at all annoyed or perturbed by this as the point is not the city and this sure as hell is not a snub of my home; rather, this comic focuses on the people, not the place and in the case of early twenty-somethings, the place doesn't matter anywhere near as much as what they do, what it is they're looking for. Love, security, fun, some sense of purpose: all of this and much more is at the heart of the comic and not the background against which the trials and travails of the young take place. In that respect, this is a work wonderfully accomplished.
The art has really grown on me since my first look through. I won't say it's “fine and functional” because it is, in fact, something a good deal more. While there is an element of the unrealistic to Kelly's pencil/inks, it absolutely works given the subject matter and the characters involved. Something about this issue and its emphasis on the search, the quest to find an identity and make some sort of a definite move in one's life demands that things not look too real. In fact, the only time there is any note of reality – and this may just be because it's the opening of the issue and I haven't adjusted to the style yet – comes in the first panels in the midst of Megan and her boyfriend engaging in a quickie in the back of the restaurant they work at; she's a waitress, he's a line cook. In that moment of rushed intimacy – and more specifically the second panel, a liplock that does not necessarily clue us into Megan's panties currently dangling from her shoe – a reality is established that not only makes the rest of the issue appear as a sequence of drawings by comparison, but also validates the emotion and the impact of the comic itself. In short, this is a style accomplishing what it needs to accomplish but also improving upon and embellishing the story at precisely the same time. It sets the tone for the rest of the issue without the need for text, demonstrating a use of imagery to establish the extremes of a search, the points of departure and arrival.
The union of text and image demands that both strike the same chord with the same force; a synergistic representation of the panel's intent. To that end, the last word of the text – be it dialogue balloon or thought bubble – need not occur at the same moment as the image rendered. This is to say that the image can take place at the opening of a frame of dialogue or thought process, or the end or anywhere else in between. The key is that the image, somehow or other, expresses the appropriate emotion, conveys the correct message, and vice versa. Consequently, there is perhaps no scene more difficult to convey in a comic book panel than one of intensely subtle emotional involvement: that of grief that knows no depths, revelry in truly evil acts...and the utter exposure to harm that is an expression of romantic love.
I say all of this as a prelude to what is the key panel in the entire comic. In this the final image of Megan and her boyfriend on the penultimate page of the comic, Megan has rejected “Mr. Manners” and returned to the guy she started the issue with, telling him she loves him. It's a beautifully rendered scene incorporating two speech bubbles, one with “...” inside and the other simply containing those three small words. Megan's face is buried in her unnamed boyfriend's shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck as she stands on tip-toes to achieve this body lock. It is a scene touching in its tenderness and powerful in the rawness of the emotion. The arc of this issue has been one of self-discovery (and so, it seems, is that of the series) and in this moment Megan knows who she is and what she wants. My only qualm is the boyfriend's facial expression: it's just wrong. It has the weirdly put-out unease that doesn't quite sync with the rest of the panel. Like I said in the paragraph above, the images don't have to align with the final bit of text, but I find his expression irritating. Maybe it's just 'cause I'm not the kind of guy that looks irritated when any of my friends go in for that necessary hug, let alone my girlfriend, but it almost suggests that he doesn't love her back...and maybe that's OK. Like I said, this is Megan's road to discovery, not his; so maybe what she says on the last page in what is a clear pan-back shot of the building they're in, that, “Someone who'll love me back” does not refer to him specifically, just a goal and end result she has in mind.
I thought the inclusion of the soundtrack list in the end notes by Wood and Kelly to be clever, if a bit off-putting. Personally, I usually read comics without any real extra external stimuli, just so the comic itself has a chance to tell its story without outside influence; this is more of a general rule for reading anything ever since I fell asleep listening to the Dresden Dolls while reading Lord of the Barnyard...I woke up on a crescendo scared shitless. In my own head, though, I'm guessing that I probably construct a soundtrack of impressions and quietly line-up what I'd use for each scene. The creators' lists are good and all, I just didn't need them/didn't want them. It's kinda like reading a great book as a kid that you loved to pieces and then seeing a movie made based on it and, for me anyways, it takes a long damn time before you can see the characters again as you first saw them and not as they appeared on-screen.
One final note on that key panel and I'll rank and get up out of this piece: concluding the issue with this declaration of love and moment of vulnerability creates a fantastic counterpoint to the opening scene of a quickie in the back. As readers, we go from a moment of rushed intimacy to one that takes its time, does what it needs to. This is also the maturation of the relationship – and of Megan specifically – from brief, ephemeral passion to one of honest emotion and real need. You can fuck anyone in the back of a restaurant – I mean if you can...get into the back of the restaurant that is – but how often can you tell someone you love them and mean it? To me, this is some truly fantastic craftsmanship on Wood and Kelly's parts.
Ranking: Voltron 'cause even without color it still says everything it should say and gives me a lot to say.
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